First Sight
by Meatball42
Summary: Aly's Midwinter was rather boring and very pointless.


In the courtyard far below where Aly was standing a group of tumblers practiced their act. Aly watched them through a window, her Sight easily catching the subtle signals used by the performers to perfect their timing. She had singled out the leader and was beginning to search for weapons hidden under their clothes when someone grabbed her elbow, jerking her out of her thoughts.

"Aly, Victoire has brought her sister's Seeing crystal," said Eloren. She looked excitedly behind her at the group of young ladies who were gathering around a table on the other side of the sitting room.

Aly scowled, already fed up of the girls her age, who only cared about fashion and other boring things. "Seeing crystals are trifles. You only see a quick flash of the future or the past, nothing useful. Why bother?" She turned back to the window.

"But Aly, she said we can see our husbands!" Eloren insisted. "Don't you want to see the man you'll marry?"

"I'd rather see the end of this party," Aly grumbled, but she took in her friend's pleading expression and gave up. "Alright!"

Aly followed her friend to the small crowd of noble girls, sighing inside at the thought of more giggles about dresses or perfumes. She'd much rather be visiting her brothers; surely the pages or the sorcerers in training weren't required to spend their Midwinter Eve in a room with expensive furnishings and a chaperone?

Aramanth of Disart, an older girl who was already betrothed, was explaining the workings of the Seeing crystal to the others when Elorn and Aly sat down. She had wonderful posture and her lilac dress was conventional but pretty, and all the girls hung on her every word. Aly, however, looked back to the window longingly.

"Who shall go first?" Aramanth asked, and all the girls began to speak over each other. With an amused smile, Aramanth offered the rose-colored crystal to the girl on her left, Pellise of Josu's Dirk. As she'd been instructed, Pellise held the crystal in her palm and closed her fingers over it. She whispered her question into her fist, then, once all the girls had scurried around the table to get a good view, held it up.

The crystal was blank for a moment, and then there was a twist of light and a forehead beneath sandy hair was visible for an instant.

"A blonde," Pellise sighed dreamily. "What luck!"

"Maybe it's Quinden," Victoire teased, naming a page the girls all knew. "My turn!"

Aly stopped paying attention to the causes of the squeals and giggles, trying to imagine how her mother and father were passing Midwinter in between fighting ogres. She looked up only when Eloren clutched her hand and whispered about blue eyes. Then, all too soon, "Your turn, Aly!"

With a polite smile to Aramanth, Aly took the crystal. Of course Midwinter was a time for lovers, and talk of husbands was practically tradition, but Aly didn't want a husband, not for a long time. Like her mother, she wanted to travel, have adventures. Like her father, she'd like for those adventures to involve spy craft, something that would be very difficult if one was lugging about a husband.

"Aly?" Eloren prompted. Realizing she'd drifted off again, Aly apologized. Reluctantly, she whispered into her palm. "Show me my husband."

There was a pause, and then a black flash appeared in the crystal, morphing in an instant into an ear and jaw. The man's skin was dark, but in the second that it was visible Aly thought she saw feathers under his skin.

Then he was gone, and one of the girls giggled. "I suppose you'll be marrying a Bazhir, Aly," one of them said taunted.

Aly glared at the girl. "So what if I do? My mother is a member of a Bazhir tribe. Our king is the Voice of the Tribes, and my brother is in knight's training with Bazhir boys." "That's enough," Aramanth scolded. "There's nothing wrong with marrying a Bazhir tribesman," she told the girl who'd teased Aly, who blushed furiously into her lap. "Aly, would you pass the crystal on, please?"

Aly handed away the crystal and, as soon as the girls were watching for the next husband, slipped back to her window. The tumblers had disappeared, and Aly had nothing to distract her from the man in the crystal. His skin was darker than the Bazhir, dark like the raka of the Copper Isles, she deduced. But nothing explained the feather pattern she'd seen.

Aly shook her head. Seeing crystals were not always reliable, and anyway, she wasn't going to meet this man for years.

She was only sixteen, after all.


End file.
